Chapter 10 - THE TEST THEY COULDN'T AVOID
For twenty-four hours, Elena did not speak to Holden except through practical necessity.
They stayed in separate rooms.
He did not protest.
She assumed guilt.
It was actually respect.
That irritated her too.
A court order was the fastest way to answer Vesta’s ugliest claim, so Richard Ferris—who was family but had long ago stopped pretending the dynasty deserved obedience—arranged emergency genetic testing using preserved medical samples from Jonathan Ferris’s old estate records.
Results would take days.
Days in which Vesta did not remain passive.
She filed for temporary protection of family assets against “malicious exploitation by emotionally distressed relatives.”
She accused Brin of extortion.
She contacted every major donor personally.
And she sent Elena a handwritten note:
When truth enters a house built on inheritance, no marriage survives intact.
Elena tore it in half.
But the line stayed.
Doctor Harris chose that same day to confess one more thing.
He had not merely received pressure from Vesta.
He had signed an amended report lowering the sedative concentration because he feared losing his board appointment.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Elena looked at him.
“My baby is dead.”
He lowered his eyes.
“I know.”
No apology could carry that weight.
Still, his admission gave them leverage.
Then Brin called from an unknown number.
“I found the name of the security chief’s payment account,” she whispered. “It wasn’t routed through Vesta.”
Holden took the phone.
“Through who?”
Brin answered:
“Through your late father’s private estate shell.”
He looked at Elena.
That meant the tampering had been financed through old Ferris money tied not to Vesta’s public channels, but to Jonathan Ferris’s closed estate structures.
Structures only a few people could access.
Vesta.
Holden.
Possibly Richard.
Or whoever had inherited secret authority.
The same evening, the DNA results arrived.
Jonathan Ferris was not Elena’s father.
The possibility died there.
Holden and Elena were not related.
Vesta’s bloodline panic should have lessened.
Instead, it deepened.
Because if Jonathan was not Elena’s father, why had he tried to claim her after Anna Mercer died?
And why was his private shell paying a security officer on the night Elena fell?
Elena sat with Richard and Holden at the dining table until after midnight.
Documents.
Names.
Old estate maps.
Corporate shells.
Richard finally found it.
A yearly stipend from Jonathan Ferris’s estate to Anna Mercer.
Twenty-seven years ago through three years before her death.
Then continuing—quietly—to Elena’s boarding school until she turned eighteen.
Elena whispered:
“He was paying for me.”
Richard nodded.
“Not as a father. As something else.”
Holden turned a final page and went still.
“What?”
He slid the sheet toward her.
It was a letter from Jonathan to his attorney.
If anything happens to Anna, her daughter must never be left in Vesta’s custody. She knows why.
Elena read the line twice.
Then whispered:
“Knows why what?”
No one answered.
Because at that exact moment, someone began pounding on the townhouse door.
May you like
When Holden opened it, Celia Rowan was standing there.
And she looked terrified.
